I recently went through ALICE training at work. Surprisingly it was my very first time getting active shooter training. The main takeaway was to get the hell out of the building.
My office has had some experience with gun violence. It’s not in the best of neighborhoods. Two years ago there was a shooting outside the back of the building. Our organization has also received threats where the entire office was evacuated.
I even have a plan if a gunman enters the building – there’s a door that locks that blocks off access to my desk. I would lock the door, hide under my desk, and call 911. That’s my plan if I can’t escape. I thought about this well before the training.
The training had some interesting ways to distract a shooter but I think if I was put in the situation I would freeze and be absolutely no help. The instructor kept saying “engage with the shooter”. When put in that situation, who would have the balls to do that?
Usually, during the training, they do live simulations, but my employer chose not to do that. Apparently, it’s pretty intense and even traumatic. The instructor said there was a woman at another local organization who was so traumatized by the simulations that she had to take two weeks off of work.
We listened to 911 tapes from Columbine High School. It was extremely difficult to hear. I was in high school when the Columbine shooting happened and it changed everything.
I’ve cried over the fact that my six-year-old has to do active shooter drills at school. She doesn’t know what it’s for. The night after my training I asked my daughter what she thought about lockdown drills at school. She asked, “is that when we huddle together?” I said yes and asked her why she has to do that. She said, “It’s for practice like a fire drill.” That’s all she knows — it’s “practice”. She doesn’t know any different. I left it at that.
I remember feeling scared during tornado drills at school. Growing up in the Midwest I damn well knew what a tornado was. I can’t imagine being told to hide when you don’t really know the reason. That has to be frightening and confusing.
They tell students to hide but in Florida, the shooter pulled the fire alarm. What would you do?
There was a shooting at our local high school during a football game a couple months ago — the school my daughter will be going to. But people said it was gang-related — not random — as if that’s supposed to make me feel better about it. No one died but a couple people were wounded.
I do think about these situations – especially at work or out in public – but sometimes it seems like mass shootings happen so frequently that an event can be easily forgotten. Then it happens again. And again. In a way, you become desensitized to it. Even so, it’s still on my mind. Is it on yours?
Do you guys think about these situations often? Do you ever go somewhere and make a plan in your head of where you would go and what you would do? Do you avoid crowded places?
Is it even possible to prepare for an active shooter situation? Will the scenarios I play in my head ever be useful? Or is it causing unnecessary anxiety?
“No way to prevent this says only country where this regularly happens.” — The Onion, whenever there’s a mass shooting.
In Australia, after a gun massacre, in 1996 they banned semi-automatics and pump-action guns. They’ve gone more than 25 years without another gun massacres.
President Obama had something to say about people who cling to god-n-gunz. He was right.
The main takeaway was to get the hell out of the building.
I think you learned the wrong lesson. The main takeaway is to get the hell out of the country.
The instructor kept saying “engage with the shooter”. When put in that situation, who would have the balls to do that?
Richard Fierro and Thomas James. Google their names and remember them, not the name of the loser scum they disarmed and beat the shit out of after they ran TOWARDS him. I hope I’d have the nads to do what they did if I was ever unfortunate enough to find myself in the USA.
I’ve cried over the fact that my six-year-old has to do active shooter drills at school.
It would be more constructive to look into options for emigration.
Do you guys think about these situations often? Do you ever go somewhere and make a plan in your head of where you would go and what you would do? Do you avoid crowded places?
It’s difficult to describe how ludicrous these questions sound to people who live in a civilised country.
Is it even possible to prepare for an active shooter situation? Will the scenarios I play in my head ever be useful? Or is it causing unnecessary anxiety?
In order:
– yes, you can prepare… but there’s a common saying in the army: “no battle plan survives contact with the enemy”. Army training is mostly about desensitising you to being shot at so you don’t just freeze. And even that doesn’t work for a lot of people. Prepare, by all means – why not? My preparations would start with applying for a passport and researching job opportunities somewhere less dystopianly horrible.
– Probably not, because they’re not “live” training, which is the most useful thing. Skipping the simulation because people might get upset is an ideal way to get them killed in the event the thing they’re supposed to be training for ever happens. It’s like training someone to deal with a ship sinking by talking about how to swim, but not throwing them in a pool in case they get wet – worse than useless, because you’ve wasted their time AND given them a false sense of having done something positive.
– I’d say that if it hasn’t convinced you to go live somewhere safer, it’s not causing enough anxiety.
@2; thank you for jump-starting my thoughts in a direction I had been mulling over since Ashes related her discomfort with New York City. And that is, the fear that is constantly being pumped into the population–especially in the parts of the country that are more conservative. Moving away from the crazy would require doing something has been beaten into the psyche as being terrifying–and that is, breaking out of the conservative bubble that’s been so carefully grown and nurtured.
Despite the statistics that red states and more rural states have a far higher risk to the general public of being assassinated than blue states, there’s a carefully-inculcated terror of big cities as being dangerous. Please not that I’m not referring to Ashes here; I’m speaking in generalities.
For a more specific example, a couple of years ago, a coworker from a more rural part of my state was bragging about how she and countless others stormed the doors of a discount department store and overwhelmed the workers. She proudly related how she got into a shoving and screaming match with other shoppers, and emerged with a discounted television–the sixth one for her house! Now every room has its own tv! This same person claims to have once gone to NYC and been terrified to walk down the street because she was sure she’d be killed 11 times from the taxi at the curb to the doors of the theater.
My grandparents got off the boat at Ellis Island in NY and most of the family has arrayed itself in one of the five boroughs. I didn’t grow up there, but I’ve been for many an occasion and it doesn’t terrify me. I’ve put some thought into why it terrifies others, and I believe it’s the Fear of the Not-Just-Like-Me.
Again, I’m not saying Ashes is like this. What I’m saying is that constant “other places are DANGEROUS AND SCARY!” propaganda makes people less likely to encounter anyone different, and less likely to consider leaving a bad situation because ZOMG, other places are WORSE! The typical American doesn’t travel outside the USA even on vacation; moving would seem impossible.
Huh. Had to look it up:https://www.alicetraining.com/about-us/
Obviously, not living in the USA, it’s not something to which I’ve ever been exposed.
So, no, I never think about being in an active shooter situation, being in Australia.
Not that shootings never happen here, maybe once every few years, but it’s certainly not hundreds of times a year.
(Incidentally, I’m not even surprised that it’s a for-profit enterprise, this training.
It is the USA, after all)